GM, Ford and Chrysler represent to a large degree the Industrial Age legacy of manufacturing in the U.S.  “What was good for General Motors was good for the United States” was, for decades in the 20th century a very true statement.  The manufacturing might of America post WWII was an economic miracle and the apotheosis of the Industrial Age.  Supported by the explosive growth of television and the American advertising business, the consumer market of wondrous new goods exploded.  The Big Three auto companies rode this wave to unprecedented success.

Every year, there were the exciting new model introductions of all the auto makes in the Fall.  Families became conditioned to buying new cars every few years just to keep up with the styling - and their neighbors..  Planned obsolescence was part of the business plan of the U.S. auto industry.  The oil embargo of 1973-74 was a major hiccup and it provided a market opportunity for Japanese auto makers to enter the market with small cars that provided higher MPG than those provided by the Big Three.  Once the price of oil collapsed after the Iranian revolution the next two decades of cheap oil allowed the Big Three to manufacture ever bigger SUVs and trucks which they sold the American public with their powerful marketing efforts.

The problem was that the leadership of the Big Three never adjusted to the post-9/11 world.  Oil has increased in price by 1400% since 1998 and 700% since 2001, yet the Detroit auto makers continued …

I have written several columns about cell phones in the past. Each one was due to milestones of growth. The speed of growth in the use of cell phones continues to be astounding. It was announced last week by the International Telecommunication Union that the number of total global cell phone subscribers will exceed the number of non-subscribers for the first time in 2008.

When you stop and think about it, this is nothing less than amazing. This means that more than half of all human beings alive today have cell phones. That includes all children, all the elderly, all the people living in poverty around the world, all the people living in underdeveloped countries and all those living in remote areas of the world where there is no cell phone use. Of course there are a number of people in the U.S. and elsewhere that have more than one cell phone, but that is a very small percentage of total users.

In 2006, when doing research on my forthcoming book and for speeches I deliver, the latest projections at that time suggested that this 50% threshold would not be crossed until 2010 at the earliest. This time compression of projected growth of electronic connectedness has become a familiar experience to me. In addition to cell phone subscriber projections there has been an almost constant upward estimation of Internet users and terabytes of content coursing through the Internet. Research conducted …

China was struck by a historically unprecedented snow storm last week.  Just the sheer amount of snow completely paralyzed all types of transportation, ground and air.  Power lines were snapped, cutting power to tens of millions of people.  Power was cut so that a significant portion of China’s railroad system was powerless to move people and supplies.  What made this even worse was the timing, which coincided with the major holiday of the year, the Chinese New Year.  More than 200 million people travel on this holiday.  When a large percentage of these people finally reached the train stations they found them without power and without trains.

There were many images that made me think of Katrina. Pictures of vast amounts of people jammed together in large numbers, shivering in the cold with no place to go made me think of vast amounts of people clinging to high ground or crowded into shelters..  Thousands of people, mostly military actually using snow shovels to clear major highways as there is no large snow removal equipment made me think of small boats with outboard motors rescuing people and animals from flood waters.  Leaders of the country, fearful of rioting and unrest actually found their way to train stations to try to calm the teeming millions with megaphones.

I do not have enough information to determine whether the government reacted with appropriate speed and compassion.  They probably did.  That is where the comparison between this snow storm and Katrina in not appropriate. The incompetence of …